India is proposing to ban DRM circumvention and throw people in jail for it. …

That might sound a bit dated, but it has nothing on the country's copyright law, which was last overhauled completely in 1957. Although it was updated five times in the 1980s and 1990s, the law does not comply with numerous international treaties such as the WIPO Internet Treaties of 1996.

On April 19, another major set of Copyright Act amendments (PDF) was introduced with the explicit goal of bringing India into compliance "with the provisions of the two WIPO Internet Treaties, to the extent considered necessary and desirable." (Note that final clause; we'll return to it in a bit.)

This legal update has been in the works for years—it goes back to at least 2005. It also contains several things that the big content industries would seem to want, such as a ban on circumventing DRM and threatening both fines and jail time for those who do so.

So why are the copyright industries so upset at India's attempt to bring its copyright into the Internet era? Isn't that what they want?

Sort of, but they want it done in one particular way.

Our way or the highway

India has long been one of the few countries on the US Special 301 "Priority Watch List" (PDF) as one of the world's top offenders when it comes to piracy and copyright infringement. While the inclusion of Canada (yes, Canada) on this list has always seemed patently bizarre to us, the case for India is more easily made.

Here's how bad it is: "The piracy rate for music in the online space is estimated at 99%... India was among the top 10 countries in the world for illegal filesharing (P2P) activities... In one case, pamphlets were being distributed with the morning newspaper offering pirated software and referring readers to the website www.cd75dvd150.20m.com to place orders... It is estimated that India's cable companies declare only 20% of their subscribers and that the piracy level in this market is at 80% with significant losses... The sale of high-risk trade books at traffic junctions in New Delhi appears to be a lesson; last year it was at epidemic proportions."

All of those quotes come courtesy of the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) as part of its 2010 report to the US government (PDF) on the Special 301 list of IP offenders. (The IIPA is made up of groups like the RIAA, MPAA, ESA, etc.) Once again, the IIPA demands that India stay on the highest-profile "Priority Watch List, in part because the country's law is not consistent with the WIPO Internet Treaties.

This reasoning sounds a bit odd, since India hasn't even signed the WIPO treaties and so can't be considered in breach of them. But doing things a "different" way isn't really an option for the IIPA, which wants to impose a single standard on most of the world. That standard will sound familiar to US readers:

Actually, none of these ideas is bad on its own; statutory damages can serve a useful function when they are kept within appropriate bounds. Similarly, the WIPO Internet treaties are not themselves objectionable; even their DRM anti-circumvention provisions are flexible, and allow countries great freedom in lawmaking.

India's new copyright amendments take advantage of this freedom. The bill itself tells us that its anticircumvention provisions are meant to comply with the WIPO Internet Treaties, but they do so in a way that the US attempt to comply with WIPO—the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)—never did: it would be legal to bypass DRM if the intended use is a legal one.

As India's proposed amendment puts it, bypassing DRM "with the intention of infringing" copyright is illegal, but if there's no intent to infringe, it's OK. The bill also does not appear to address devices and software (like DeCSS and other tools) that make such bypassing possible. Those would remain legal.

Commenting on a draft version of this proposal, the IIPA slammed it hard. The bill "contains an exception which would appear to permit circumvention for any purpose that would not amount to infringement under the act," says the group, "thereby almost completely eviscerating any protection."

Rather than judging actions and intentions—was that DVD DRM bypassed in order to make a home backup, or was it bypassed to make and sell copies on the street?—such a rule lays a far heavier burden on the copyright industries when it comes to policing the content. It's also arguably much fairer, since it preserves fair dealing and other exceptions and limitations to copyright that DRM can often override.

The law also does little to specifically address Internet piracy. The big content companies have settled on a basic worldwide strategy of "graduated response," preferably one that ends by booting people off the Internet. Indeed, this year's IIPA Special 301 report demands that, "before this phenomenon spins totally out of control, the Indian government should ensure that ISPs and rights holders cooperate in establishing a fair and workable 'graduated response' system."

India does not appear to agree. When the US finalizes its 2010 Special 301 list soon, we expect India to top it once again.

The Special 301 process is a certainly an odd one: where else can big entertainment companies have entire countries put on a US government blacklist over issues like graduated response—something that the US doesn't even have?

Perhaps the strangeness of the whole process can best be summed up by the very last sentences in the IIPA's 2010 report on India, where "open source software" comes in for a beating: "The industry is also concerned about moves by the government to consider mandating the use of open source software and software of only domestic origin. Though such policies have not yet been implemented, IIPA and BSA urge that this area be carefully monitored."

Open source is bad enough, but a "buy Indian" law? That would be an outrage and surely something the US government would not itself engage in as recently as last year. Err, right?

This copyright stuff is getting out of hand. Who do these entertainment companies think they are to dictate how the rest of the world uses media? As I understand it, India makes a lot of it's own entertainment, why should the **IAA groups in the US care whether Bollywood piracy is rampant?

Also, a lot of the reason why "piracy is rampant" in countries like India and China and continents like South America is because these zones are Grey-markets. They very rarely see official product launches, so any consumables they get have to come through 3rd or 4th party importers who jack up the prices. So the people in these countries (with much lower earning potential than US) have to chose between the official stuff or the much, much cheaper pirated version.

An example from Ecuador, official dvds cost upwards of $50, the same ones that cost $5 here. They often come out months or years late. However, you can go to the cornerstore and pick up a bootleg dvd of any movie you want for $1. Same thing with videogames and computer software. A ps2 in Ecuador can run upwards of $600, the games will cost $100 each. Forget about greatest hits discounts. Guess what, you can get the same games, bootlegged, for $1 each. Keep in mind, Ecuadorians generally earn less than $1000/mo.

That's why "piracy is rampant" in some other countries. If the **IAAs wanted to cut down on piracy they could start releasing media in those places BUT charge prices according to those area's standard-of-living.

Side note:What's the deal with regions on dvds? What's the point of PAL vs. NTSC? Why do different countries have different wall outlets? If anything should be standardized it should be those things. Sheesh.

Statutory damages are a blight on our planet. Rather than make the corporation prove a loss, our legal system lets them point to an arbitrary number and demand payment. It's a free admission that nobody knows what damage, if any, was actually done but you're still going to be forced to pay an amount arbitrary to your situation.

And this is true of many so called hubs of piracy. You can't expect people to pay out more than several moths of income for a single movie or game. You either price appropriately for the market, or you expect to not sell anything but to the most elite sub 1% of the population.

Yeah, I was basing the sub-$1000/mo figure on some of my family members there. The vast majority of people only make about $200/mo. It's crazy different. I love visiting because I feel like a millionaire.

The irony there is that if you calculate the damages awarded the RIAA in the Jamie Thomas case versus the settlement India received divided by the number of people dead, dying, and still afflicted by that incident. It's apparent the US fees that an uploaded song is worth more than a human life. We're such humanitarians.

I just dont understand why the US needs to interfere what we do(india).

first of all the thing about DRM we are just doing the sane thing. If i rip a dvd for my personal backup or storage, how come is it illegal ? I have bought the DVD with my money and using it for my personal purposes. So fuck you DMCA.

Second, there is no iTunes Store, no Amazon Market how are we supposed to get the legal thing if its not launched in a legal way. The only option left is piracy. Give us a iTunes store that sells songs at 1.99Rs and watch the piracy rate go down.

Third about OSS, how is it bad? We just refuse to pay 8000Rs = 179$ for a stupid copy of Windows Home Basic. Most of our curricula for technical education has mandated the use of OSS for teaching purposes and most of the government offices now run on OSS. Which saves millions of $$ for us.

I just dont understand why the US needs to interfere what we do(india).

In this case it definitely doesn't, and I wish the IIPA would shut up and catch fire so we can all move on with our lives. I wish we'd specified fair use exemptions from DRM circumvention laws. And nobody can tell me OSS is a horrible thing that should be monitored by us, even if its use is mandated within governments.Kudos on India for tackling that rationally.

Statutory damages are a blight on our planet. Rather than make the corporation prove a loss, our legal system lets them point to an arbitrary number and demand payment. It's a free admission that nobody knows what damage, if any, was actually done but you're still going to be forced to pay an amount arbitrary to your situation.

Um... Statutory damages are the basis of the GPL. Without them, how could free software developers claim damages for infringing the copyright of something they give away for free?

I'm not sure how best to square that with the outlandish damages claimed in filesharing cases, but getting rid of them entirely does not look like a good solution.

Statutory damages are a blight on our planet. Rather than make the corporation prove a loss, our legal system lets them point to an arbitrary number and demand payment. It's a free admission that nobody knows what damage, if any, was actually done but you're still going to be forced to pay an amount arbitrary to your situation.

Statutory damage is fine as long as they keep the damages to a sane level; it goes after the person who is actually committing infringement rather than shotgunning everyone who happens to be using the same connection.

That said, US government really needs to rein in those damned lobbyists.

Redlazer wrote:

It isn't the "US" here people. It's a group of companies that Americans, and I, a Canadian, also hate.

The US government has nothing to do with it.

Yes it does. It's LISTENED to those companies. If the government simply ignored them or told them to stuff it, the whole DMCA and ACTA thing wouldn't have proceeded this far.

First of all, you guys badly need to visit India to actually understand the situation here.

1. There is no legal AFFORDABLE(by Indian standards) way of buying music digitally online. None. Zero. Zilch. 2. Even if you do want to buy "legally", you can't get local tracks in a digital format anywhere. For foreign tracks(ie. all American, British, etc) you have to pretend to be a foreigner and buy from an store like iTunes.3. Nobody would ever buy buy from iTunes if they were even forced to since it would be way too expensive for the common man. India has got overall a way lower standard of living. (a dollar comes to 45rs. for the things we can get for that much, this is totally not worth buying).4. The foreign tracks that do get into India through physical CDs are at-least years old. The only Linkin Park album I have seen was of Hybrid Theory and the one they made with Jay Z.5. Nobody, not even the local Bollywood film markers(we have characteristic musical films here whose music is what you would find on anything like channel v or MTV) is interested in even attempting to sell music to Indians.

Piracy is the only option and except crying foul unnecessarily I think the IPAA should at least attempt to sell music before complaining.

Piracy is the only option and except crying foul unnecessarily I think the IPAA should at least attempt to sell music before complaining.

This is an interesting point. I say this as I live in the US, and I've been asking for the same thing. Sure, we have some digital action. Yet I ask, where the hell are the formats we want to buy? Take movies and TV. Where are the lower res XviD/DivX AVI's? What about X.264/H.264 720P/1080P format videos in either the MKV or AVI container? No, Hollywood insists that we're going to take it on DVD or BluRay or we aren't getting shite. They'd rather spend hundreds of million on lawsuits and more yet on lobbying for legislation to keep their business model than provide what the consumer wants.

Tons of people pay for access beyond their basic Internet connectivity just so they can access these formats via USENET or for seedboxes and VPN/Proxy services to grab torrent's. That says people are willing to pay, but they aren't being offered a way to get what they want in a legal manner. While that doesn't excuse piracy, Hollywood really can't do much but blame themselves for missing out on a very clear opportunity due to myopic CEO's desire to maintain a clearly outdated business model of scarcity that went out the window with the Internet.

I just dont understand why the US needs to interfere what we do(india).

first of all the thing about DRM we are just doing the sane thing. If i rip a dvd for my personal backup or storage, how come is it illegal ? I have bought the DVD with my money and using it for my personal purposes. So fuck you DMCA.

It isn't the "US" here people. It's a group of companies that Americans, and I, a Canadian, also hate.

The US government has nothing to do with it.

Only the international arm. They're just pushing policies the US corporations under the head of the RIAA have been promoting. Look no further than ACTA pushing other countries to adopt US style DMCA laws, especially those that currently allow DRM circumvention for fair use.

The problem is pricing of the music/movie CD/DVDs that makes majority of people to pirate. Few years back the Indian music and movie industry was releasing CD/DVDs at the same cost structure as the imported ones hence people took time and effort to pirate them for distribution to friends and families(it went beyond and started reaching the extended 1billion family ). Three years back a company locally started selling CD/DVDs that are so low priced(less than a $1-$2 for Indian movies in DVD) that moved most of middle class away from watching the pirated versions. The media is being shared instead of ripping them to other formats. However the imported movies, latest releases are still getting pirated and need to take to various players(as there no online digital shops) are making the DRM laws difficult to follow. Another example, look at caller tunes market in mobile space.

So these companies instead of yelling/threatening, should reduce their 'GREED' and look at making smaller gains with large volumes!.

The problem is pricing of the music/movie CD/DVDs that makes majority of people to pirate. Few years back the Indian music and movie industry was releasing CD/DVDs at the same cost structure as the imported ones hence people took time and effort to pirate them for distribution to friends and families(it went beyond and started reaching the extended 1billion family ). Three years back a company locally started selling CD/DVDs that are so low priced(less than a $1-$2 for Indian movies in DVD) that moved most of middle class away from watching the pirated versions. The media is being shared instead of ripping them to other formats. However the imported movies, latest releases are still getting pirated and need to take to various players(as there no online digital shops) are making the DRM laws difficult to follow. Another example, look at caller tunes market in mobile space.

So these companies instead of yelling/threatening, should reduce their 'GREED' and look at making smaller gains with large volumes!.

Welcome to the "drug war" of the 21st century. Another stupid endless war perpetrated by the U.S. government on it's own citizens as well as on foreign governments and their citizens in the name of protecting the very corporations that line the pockets of government. Exaggerations follow about the "tolls" these "pirates" are taking on U.S. interests. They must stiffen the fines, serious jail time, three-strikes laws, they'll go after the suppliers, they'll go after the users, more and more people will end up in the court systems facing heavy fines and jail time. People will at first think it's just about the "real" criminals, that it's not about the small time user who just dabbles in a download now and then, but it is about them, it's all about them. They're just a statistic now. The war machine makes money for the corporations, the politicians, the lobbyists, the privatized prisons... they "help" other countries in the war - provide money and expertise to governments to help in the war effort... they don't want to ever see the war end. Soon it doesn't matter whether it makes sense or not, no politician will be able to stand up against it without fear of losing their corporate funding. Retired law makers will say that the war should end, only after they step down from office, retired judges will say that their hands were tied by the laws. It all started so innocently enough. We never fucking learn.

Good riddance. Go India! With much better DRM rules here in the US, where legally we're stuck with an all-or-nothing proposition with DRM. If they just left it with no DRM and reasonably priced people would buy it... case in point iTunes Store and Amazon MP3 Store. Of course, content producers like to think they control the world... thank god they don't. Remind me again why we pay to get screwed, while pirates get a overall better value even assuming if piracy was the same price (which obviously it's not)?

EDIT: No Ars, your title should say India's copyright proposals are un-American (and that's good) But your parent company might have a problem w/ that

Lol, good luck to Big Content trying to pass any anti-consumer laws in India. Especially when you consider the scale of the bureaucracy they'll have to navigate through. There'll be no shunting of bills through the back door just before election time (unlike my other country of citizenship in north-west Europe...)

There definitely isn't any point picking on the average US citizen over this sort of thing. They have their own share of pirates just as India and every other country does. These million dollar plus lawsuits were slammed down on US citizens - remember that.

The main argument here in favour of India's position (apart from their sovereign rights) seems to be that these copyright groups are having a whinge about what happens in India without offering a reasonable alternative. How can you expect them to buy something legitimately when it's not even available? There is the reasonable argument that they're not entitled to it, but you might as well face reality - most people just don't buy that. Some might even label selective-country marketing as a new form of discrimination.

I live in Australia where we get pretty much all of the high calibre content that the US does, but we get it late. I get around it by downloading and watching it -now- and then buying it from the DVD store legitimately once it's available. I've done this with a few shows, including SG-1, Desperate Housewives and Battlestar Galactica. All three now occupy shelves in my DVD cupboard. I completely accept that I am buying the work and supporting the industry that supplies me with so much entertainment (which is why I buy everything I consume), but I DO NOT accept that I have to wait some arbitrary period of time for it to arrive here. This is doubly true given that a lot of content nowadays DOES come out at the same time here - if some people can do it, everyone can do it. Laziness is no excuse for greed.

When I was in India(Mumbai / Bombay) for 6 months for a project (about 4 years back), I learned alot about how things work there.

The average person probably earns less then 10,000 ruppees a month (200 USD I think?)

I remember seeing ads for junior police officers, and they were being offered something like 3,000 ruppees a month.

And people wonder why they can't afford to pay 150 bucks for some original software.

I remember walking into a music / video shop, and pretty much everything they have were copies, simply cos almost noone can afford the original stuff.

I was in an office with a bunch of computers, and they were mostly running linux with dual boot to windows for the rare software that only runs in Windows (not a single software was original).

You are not even provided with proper running water 24/7, there are blackouts often, the roads are congested in the middle of cities and pretty much none existant outside cities (other then some gravel / mud roads). They were just beginning to build some tar roads / expressways to connect the cities.

With such major basic infrastructure issues to be solved, I doubt that copyright issues are even a big thing there (although they have a sizable movie / music industry there).

Maybe it's just my experience, but I have ordered a lot of Japanese dramas over the past few years for my wife via Ebay (I mostly torrent them now), and without exception they have all come from Canada, and they have all assuredly been bootlegs (though they look extremely professional).

I don't know if this is endemic to Canada, or if it's just the stuff I buy...

[moderated="racist language"]these useless people are all high on piracy and india and china are the only countries who are the biggest reasons for all the loss for all companies (whether small or big) in the world..

not only software companies but also Hollywood get huge losses due these freakin' countries!!!!!!! Fuck these people......

I am not against anybody but these people always have to act so crappy and that sucks and increases hatred,,,,

and to my friend (the-unknown)... i agree with all your points... but just because those people can't afford to buy stuff that doesn't mean they should buy and pirate stuff..!!! if you can't afford, then don't buy it,... as simple.. think about the companies and all the people who put in their hard work in making software and this is what they get!!!!!! Damn it...!!!

and India has a lot more issues than this.... there are some indians (just like the west) follow Christianity... and these people who are actually developed than those other are being... not given proper right.... do something about that faggot indian government!!! I feel really bad for all those Christians, I have been to India twice... !!![/moderated]